As we are nearing the long awaited "Who Shot JR Moment",It's safe to assume it's down to Ryan,Portman,Rubio and McDonnell. Portman is considered the "Vanilla Candidate" and Romney would choose him if he desperately needed Ohio.But keep in mind,Neighboring McDonnell could do the trick. As we all know,Romney is going to choose someone who is very prepared to be President god forbid anything happens to Mittens,and also a VP who could run a very succsesful campaign in 2016. McDonnell could help carry Virginia,Ohio,The Carolina's and maybe even Pennsylvania. he would definitley "Energize And Reload The GOP Ticket".

i know I’m in the minority here (especially with all the Romney haters) but I think any of these four would be excellent choices. If it is true as the author thinks that McDonnell would help in all of those neighboring swing states, then he is sort of the obvious choice. Personally I doubt that premise...but if it is true, then that would be great. Mc is also sufficiently conservative to carry the torch into the future.

No, Cheney won’t say the same thing about him that he said about Sarah Palin. Because just about the only commonality in their backgrounds is the two years into their governorship.

McDonnell served 21 yrs in the Army. He served 14 yrs in the VA House. He served as Va Attorney General. He is head of a prominent state on the doorstep of DC, which is quite different from Alaska. Not to mention he’s a lawyer and went to the “right” schools.

Sarah Palin was in Cheney’s view not ready for what she was suddenly pushed into. I don’t agree she wasn’t ready to govern. I do agree she wasn’t prepared to handle the extreme political/media situation. I would guess Cheney would say he thinks McDonnell is ready. But who knows...nobody knows until they’re THERE.

i have zero patience for the coulda/shoulda/woulda brigade! if a campaign isn’t competent enough to get on a dang ballot then they have NO business being elected. the requirements of the presidency are a bit more rigorous than getting on the ballot for a primary, if they aren’t up to that task then good riddance. ludicrous to think that a governor of a state could defeat a primary candidate’s campaign, were it ON THE BALL.

I am amazed no one has talked about John Kasich, current governor of Ohio. He together with Jack Kemp were the architects of the balanced budgets and economic growth we enjoyed in the 90’s after the GOP took over the House.

28
posted on 07/31/2012 7:19:59 AM PDT
by Hotlanta Mike
(Resurrect the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)...before there is no America!)

Hello, isn’t this the same wonderful Bob McDonnell who thinks it’s just swell for government to put drones up to monitor the citizens of Virginia? Is that the guy? I’ve met him. Very charming. But there’s something wrong with a politician, ostensibly a Republican and conservative, who thinks we need to be spied on by government drones.

That is a fiction, unfortunately repeated and believed by too many people here. The truth is hard to recover once the conspiracies and fictions have been spread far and wide.

Perry and Gingrich were “kept off the ballot” by virtue of not submitting 10,000 valid signatures, as required by long-standing Virginia law.

Santorum was “kept off the ballot” by virtue of not having actually submitted ANY signatures, or other paperwork, to be put on the ballot.

Thus, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were the only two on the ballot, because they both submitted the required number of valid signatures.

We just had a senate primary, and 4 people, including 3 little-known names, two of whom weren’t even politicians, all were able to submit more than 15,000 signatures each for the office. Thus two people who never did politics were able to get 50% more signatures than Perry and Gingrich.

Do I wish we could have changed the law so the signatures weren’t needed, or we could have write-ins? Certainly. But there were no “shenanigans” involved that kept people from submitting enough signatures. Perry and Gingrich knew what they needed, and failed to deliver.

Just to make sure that I heard it right the first time, I went back and listened to Mark Levin speak about it again. I found it through an archive search on FR. The link is at post #17, here is the thread link:

I like Mark, and he lives in Virginia, but sometimes his level of detailed exploration of things is somewhat lacking.

What “changed” was not the requirement for signatures, but the seriousness with which the RPV approached the job of signature evaluation. And that wasn’t “last-minute”, it was a result of a lawsuit filed against the RPV.

Because a memo was sent out detailing the process in October, some people mistakenly thought the whole thing was changed in October, but that memo was simply documenting the process that was expected to be followed.

Other people were upset about a rule that said if you had 15,000 signatures, they would assume that 10,000 were good. But realize that rule didn’t keep anybody OUT of the contest — it means that if either Perry or Gingrich had gotten 15,000 signatures on their papers, it wouldn’t have mattered how many of their signatures were invalid, because nobody would have checked.

But in defense of that rule, there has NEVER been a case in Virginia where a person with 15,000 signatures didn’t have 10,000 good ones. And in this election, ROn Paul, who submitted 14,000 signatures, was checked just like Perry and Gingrich, and he had more than 10,000 valid signatures — which lends credence to the exception.

Romney was very organized in Virginia, and there was little doubt he would have his signatures. And as I said elsewhere, all 4 senate candidates had no trouble collecting signatures. And frankly, it was rediculous that Gingrich and Perry didn’t get 15,000 signatures. We had a general election during the time they were supposed to be collecting signatures. All they needed was 50 volunteers hanging out for a day at the 50 polling places. My precinct had over 1000 registered republicans vote that day. If half signed, that would ahve been 1/20th of the total signatures needed.

BTW, there was only ONE candidate who was collecting signatures at my polling place that day — Herman Cain. He had almost 25 signatures when I stopped by at 7am.

I was sad that Santorum didn’t even collect 10,000 signatures. But I was lived that Perry failed. I sent his team multiple e-mails offering to help collect signatures, and they never got back to me. He was at the RPV meeting in September, and didn’t have anybody there collecting signatures. He had a former RPV chair running his campaign, and I assumed they had the signature thing wrapped up. And they apparently didn’t circulate petitions at the local committee meeting either.

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